SIM Card & Registration

Just go to a Mobifone or Viettel office and they can assist you.

In term of reliability, I think they are all quite similar if you choose one of the top 3 (Viettel, Mobifone or Vinaphone), same as the price.

If you look for 4G, Viettel got a much better coverage and speed. You can have a map for more detail here:
https://www.nperf.com/en/map/VN/1566083 … ne/signal/

This map is from nperf, Like speedtest but for mobile, that will register the speed and coverage, it is thanks to the few people sharing their results it in VN. I'm one of them
I am using Mobifone, but I am considering switching to Viettel.

Simply go to a Viettel shop to get your simcard. Pretty simple and cheap.

kschulz wrote:

**Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but I haven't seen anything recent.

Next week, my wife and I will be moving to HCMC to study Vietnamese.

Two Questions:

(1) What is the best mobile service provider? (most reliable, decent prices, fast data speeds, etc.)

(2) I've been reading elsewhere that they have been cracking down on making sure that the sim cards are properly registered. Before, when I've been in the country its been for a couple weeks at a time and I never worried about this with the SIM cards that I bough. What are people's experience with this? Where is the best place to get properly registered SIM cards, etc?

1) It depends on where in HCMC you are, but you won't have to use data that much as WiFi is readily available in the majority of places, i use Mobifone and it seems relatively ok, get 4g every now and again, 3g is worst case scenario. My bill works out to 100,000 VND per month which is 100 texts, 100 minutes and 2 gb of data; so that is £3.30. I don't use anymore than that because most people communicate via Viber or Whatsapp etc which uses your data/WiFi as opposed to anything else.

2) My sim card worked for about two and a half weeks but then you HAVE to register it, or get a new sim card and go through the same process every two weeks, which is pointless. Go into the relevant store with your passport and then will register it all for you. All quite straight forward.

I am in the biz, and Viettel is the way to go.  U am currently testing their new 5G service, due next year.  Mobi, VNPT, etc.  all LEASE their service from Viettel.  When things go wrong, Viettel customers get 1st priority service.  That's why everyone loves cheap Mobi serveice, until SHF.

) It depends on where in HCMC you are, but you won't have to use data that much as WiFi is readily available in the majority of places, i use Mobifone and it seems relatively ok, get 4g every now and again, 3g is worst case scenario. My bill works out to 100,000 VND per month which is 100 texts, 100 minutes and 2 gb of data; so that is £3.30. I don't use anymore than that because most people communicate via Viber or Whatsapp etc which uses your data/WiFi as opposed to anything else.

The whole point of mobile service is that it should not matter 'where you are'.  Alas, in VN, it does.  If you want solid Inet, get fixed line at home, and Viettel mobile.  They have by far the best mobile coverage country-wide.

dudumomo wrote:

If you look for 4G, Viettel got a much better coverage and speed. You can have a map for more detail here:
https://www.nperf.com/en/map/VN/1566083 … ne/signal/
.......I am using Mobifone, but I am considering switching to Viettel.

This map is a great aid in choosing a carrier particularly if you live outside of HCM or Hanoi.  Of course no lines do not mean no coverage but no data.  The grey lines meaning no coverage are very informative.  If you live in Da Nang, switch back and forth between Mobi and Viettel and you will see a substantial difference.

I think for most expats an international connection to the USA or other countries is the most important thing with a mobile phone or landline provider.

But since Vietnam is constantly having problems with its underwater fibre optic lines, I don't think it's relevant which provider or which technology you use, because the international lines are the bottleneck.

There are certainly quite fast connections for companies for a lot of money that get more priority on the international connections.

As long as Vietnam doesn't get the international high performance connections under control, 5G only makes sense within Vietnam, because the immense amount of data is queued on the international lines.

The same applies to a high-rise building with many apartments.  We have a fiber optic expansion in our apartment.
However, the main fiber optic line to our tower is a bottleneck when all 200 households are watching TV or surfing the Internet.
We have a Fiber30 IP (30 Mbps) contract.  In my opinion it makes no sense to rent a more expensive, faster connection.
The speed test shows more or less 30Mbps, but I don't trust these tests, because they probably don't use the data packets that image the TV and Youtube video streaming in reality.  My internet is just slow independent whether I use a cable or Wifi. Maybe only the VNPT router is badly set.

My conclusion is, if you use your SIM card as a data hotspot for international internet, it doesn't matter which provider you use or if you use 3G, 4G or 5G technology.

5G is only relevant for marketing in the next 1 to 2 years and has no relevance for normal users.
5G is especially strongly needed for IoT (Internet of Things) / Industry 4.0.

Andy Passenger wrote:

I think for most expats an international connection to the USA or other countries is the most important thing with a mobile phone or landline provider.

But since Vietnam is constantly having problems with its underwater fibre optic lines, I don't think it's relevant which provider or which technology you use, because the international lines are the bottleneck.

There are certainly quite fast connections for companies for a lot of money that get more priority on the international connections.

As long as Vietnam doesn't get the international high performance connections under control, 5G only makes sense within Vietnam, because the immense amount of data is queued on the international lines.

The same applies to a high-rise building with many apartments.  We have a fiber optic expansion in our apartment.
However, the main fiber optic line to our tower is a bottleneck when all 200 households are watching TV or surfing the Internet.
We have a Fiber30 IP (30 Mbps) contract.  In my opinion it makes no sense to rent a more expensive, faster connection.
The speed test shows more or less 30Mbps, but I don't trust these tests, because they probably don't use the data packets that image the TV and Youtube video streaming in reality.  My internet is just slow independent whether I use a cable or Wifi. Maybe only the VNPT router is badly set.

My conclusion is, if you use your SIM card as a data hotspot for international internet, it doesn't matter which provider you use or if you use 3G, 4G or 5G technology.

5G is only relevant for marketing in the next 1 to 2 years and has no relevance for normal users.
5G is especially strongly needed for IoT (Internet of Things) / Industry 4.0.

Your 5G assessment is in reverse. Consumer value added services is the main driver.  IoT has enormous # endpoints, but most are lowspeed embedded devices.  Critical infrastructure rarely uses mobility, due to the threats inherent.

Regardless, VN 5G is not ready for primetime.

GuidoVN wrote:

Andy Passenger wrote:

I think for most expats an international connection to the USA or other countries is the most important thing with a mobile phone or landline provider.

But since Vietnam is constantly having problems with its underwater fibre optic lines, I don't think it's relevant which provider or which technology you use, because the international lines are the bottleneck.

There are certainly quite fast connections for companies for a lot of money that get more priority on the international connections.

As long as Vietnam doesn't get the international high performance connections under control, 5G only makes sense within Vietnam, because the immense amount of data is queued on the international lines.

The same applies to a high-rise building with many apartments.  We have a fiber optic expansion in our apartment.
However, the main fiber optic line to our tower is a bottleneck when all 200 households are watching TV or surfing the Internet.
We have a Fiber30 IP (30 Mbps) contract.  In my opinion it makes no sense to rent a more expensive, faster connection.
The speed test shows more or less 30Mbps, but I don't trust these tests, because they probably don't use the data packets that image the TV and Youtube video streaming in reality.  My internet is just slow independent whether I use a cable or Wifi. Maybe only the VNPT router is badly set.

My conclusion is, if you use your SIM card as a data hotspot for international internet, it doesn't matter which provider you use or if you use 3G, 4G or 5G technology.

5G is only relevant for marketing in the next 1 to 2 years and has no relevance for normal users.
5G is especially strongly needed for IoT (Internet of Things) / Industry 4.0.

Your 5G assessment is in reverse. Consumer value added services is the main driver.  IoT has enormous # endpoints, but most are lowspeed embedded devices.  Critical infrastructure rarely uses mobility, due to the threats inherent.

Regardless, VN 5G is not ready for primetime.

For me, autonomous driving (and future air taxis) also belongs to this category.

Andy Passenger wrote:

For me, autonomous driving (and future air taxis) also belongs to this category.

My skepticism of autonomous driving was confirmed by the fact that the 737's that crashed basically had a software problem.  How likely is that with cars?  I would expect a lot.  But just think, if you will, about an autonomous car trying to drive in urban Vietnamese traffic.  With motorbikes moving in all directions around it, it would be frozen in place, totally unable to move.    Do you think anyone could write the computer code for navigating a traffic circle in HCMC?